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Music From DNA Patented
stm2 writes "Two lawyers have patented generating music from a DNA sequence. According to the patent, it covers 'music generated by decoding and transcribing genetic information within a DNA sequence into a music signal having melody and harmony.' A comment to the blog post mentions DNA-derived music being performed at a conference in 1995."
This is the kind of invention that would be worth protecting if it protected only the specific device the inventors produced to do it.
But as it happens, the patent as granted would protect them from competing with me, and anyone else whose DNA codes their bodies functionality to play a musical instrument with melody and harmony.
It's a joke, it ruins "science and the useful arts" in the name of "promoting" it, and it ruins the actual narrower right of authors/inventors to be protected for a reasonably limited time from competition stealing their investment just in time to compete with them.
But no one is talking about replacing it with something Constitutional. That would be a great invention, based on the original prior art, that should be as widely copied as possible.
--
make install -not war
Well, I had thought of digging up Elvis, cloning him and embedding him into a bunch of ipods. But, I guess I can kiss that scheme goodbye now.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Look, I know it's standard groupthink around here to hate patents and anything patent related, but we don't need blatently false stories to rile everyone up.
The patent is not for "music obtained from DNA" it's for a METHOD to obtain music from DNA. The idea is actually pretty damn unique if you ask me. This is not a frivolous patent.
God damn Slashdot seems to get more and more inaccurate every year.
So much for finding a nice girl & making beautiful music together.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
This will complement nicely those audiophiles who emit DNA every time they listen to their $30,000 hi-fi systems.
The RIAA will send a settlement letter to your parents to forward to you. For only $5000 you can continue to live with your current DNA.
Swi
How would this be any different from generating music from the atomic structure of crystals, or from the x-rays being given off by a pulsar? How the fuck can you patent this? What is there to fucking patent? Christ, I wish they'd simply fine guys like this several million times their net worth or make them sign a document promising never to even go within five miles of the patent office or even think about sending in letters.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's a faster and straightforward way for geneticists to identify junk DNA in our chromosomes, because it sounds much more like top-40 music.
Similarly, DNA for coding the human brain will sound like NPR; for muscles, Jock Jams; for reproductive organs... well, you get the idea.
Interestingly, the first DNA sample they plugged into this technology was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's. They found out that his chromosomes, in fact, sound remarkably like the Spice Girls being played at 78 rpm. Strange but true.
i graduated with a bachelors in molecular biology & biochemistry in 1981. i had already read papers by that time which described audio/musical transcriptions of DNA, RNA and protein sequences specifically designed to take advantage of the greater perceptual bandwidth of the auditory system vs. the visual system.
the one thing that might be novel here (i don't have time to read a patent abstract at present) is if they have found some way to generate musically meaningful compositions that go beyond a simple (chemical unit) => (musical note) mapping. that could enhance the ability of the auditory system to recognize patterns in sequences, and might be worthy of a patent.
I was going to mod you up funny, but then thought you missed a bit of the joke, I would have added just a bit more:
The RIAA will send a settlement letter to your parents to forward to you. For only $5000 you can continue to live with your current DNA. Otherwise they will take you to court to have the offending material removed.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
I'd say he's in the clear. The patent office, on the other hand, needs a good kick.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I wrote a program quite a while back which converted text files (say, The Gettysburg Address) into standard MIDI files, and for the result to be anything even remotely playable I needed to do quite a bit of normalization as part of the translation.
So if anyone uses this for greeting cards, it's going to be 1% DNA source material and 99% pre-conceived structure. I'm sure they'll market it as "this is the music that is coursing through your veins!" when in reality it's just a really expensive random-number generator. And I'd be very interested to see what happens if you send the same DNA sample in twice, say a few months apart, and compare the results (which should be identical, right?)...
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
Seems to me that avante garde artists like John Cage already have stuff like this covered- not by patent, but by prior art. I doubt any of them dealt with DNA specifically, but they were notorious for creating music (in the loosest sense of the word) using any of various sources of random influence.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
And what happens when the music generated from my OWN DNA is a #1 hit?
"Hey Hey, we're 98% Monkeys....."
Table-ized A.I.
Here's a link to the actual patent of interest.
You just gave me a great idea for a lyric to sing at atheist meetings.... (heck, atheists need to take a leaf out of the fundies book and get some inspiring hymns...)
Here we come, a'climbin up the tree,
We've got opposable thumbs now,
They help us grasp and eat....
We're 98% Monkeys,
Our ancestors came from the ground,
We follow the path of best fitness,
'Cause it's the best game in town.
We're just trying to get laid,
Because we're programmed to,
And with each generation,
The women grow bigger boobs.
So don't tell us we're special,
Made by a hand in the sky,
We're shaped by the forces of nature,
And here's the guy to tell you why....
His name is Charles Darwin,
A science dude with a beard,
His theory changed our understandin'
We know you find that kinda weird.
If you're kinda religious,
It don't fit with your worldview.
'Cause it's all about sex, babe,
And what you do to get some too.